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Easy student

Easy student recipes

Student recipes needn’t be boring. We’ve selected easy recipes that are cheap, quick and tasty, to help you eat well as you study or if you’re heading off to university for the first time. Some of our favourite cheap student meals include tuna and broccoli pasta bake, spaghetti bolognese and a warming veggie chilli.

Get some basic student recipes under your belt, including a classic tomato sauce, smashed avocado on toast and traditional pancakes for Shrove Tuesday – plus chocolate cookies to share with new friends.

With a few ingredients, you can transform cheap student meal staples like rice, pasta and eggs into dishes like sausage, fennel and mascarpone orzo, smoky jollof or turmeric eggs with spinach. Lentils are another great option – try our red lentil dal or coconut dal – and you can swap the packaged stuff for the real deal with our easy chicken ramen bowls.

Lucky enough to have an air fryer at university? Our air fryer chicken breast salad is a must-make, along with a speedy marinated air fryer salmon.

If you need to stretch that student budget, check out the rest of our budget recipes and cheap healthy ideas, too.

Showing 1-16 of 133 recipes

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Noodle recipes

Mushroom stroganoff ramen

It's a delicious mash-up of two beloved dishes: Japanese ramen and Russian stroganoff. The perfect vegan comfort food for chilly nights.

Dairy-free Vegan Vegetarian

Medium

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Batch cooking recipes

Masala baked beans with coriander chutney

Looking for a vegan batch cook recipe? Make and freeze these warming masala baked beans, then enjoy with rice, jacket potatoes or on toast.

Dairy-free Freezable Vegan Vegetarian

Medium

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Houmous recipes

Ultimate instant houmous

Make your best ever homemade houmous with chef Helen Graham's recipe. This instant houmous is creamy, silky and ready in minutes.

Dairy-free Gluten-free Vegan

Easy

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Macaroni cheese recipes

Vegan celeriac mac and cheese

Puréed celeriac makes a rich, silky sauce for this vegan mac and cheese, topped with a porcini crumb. Vegan comfort food at its best.

Dairy-free Freezable Vegan

Easy

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Tomato pasta recipes

Pasta pomodoro

Pasta pomodoro is the original – and best – tomato pasta. This recipe is quick and easy but uses a few tricks to really amp up the flavour.

Vegetarian

Easy

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Italian pasta recipes

Classic pasta puttanesca

One of the most famous classic pasta dishes of all time, pasta puttanesca includes anchovies, garlic, capers, olives and tomatoes.

Dairy-free

Easy

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Creamy pasta recipes

Chicken alfredo

Creamy and rich with a hint of garlic and dried herbs, this easy chicken alfredo pasta is the ultimate in Italian-American comfort food.

Easy

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Tofu recipes

Nori-wrapped tofu

Crisp nuggets of tofu are coated in a spicy soy dressing, but the real pop of flavour comes from the strip of nori wrapped around each one.

Dairy-free Vegan

Easy

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Beetroot recipes

Beetroot houmous

This beautiful pink dip offers up everything we love about houmous but with a sweet earthiness from beetroot. And it takes minutes to make!

Dairy-free Gluten-free Vegan

Easy

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Recipes with tinned beans

Butter bean cacio e pepe

Cacio e pepe is one of those classic pasta dishes that combines just a couple of ingredients but results in a meal that's so much greater than the sum of its parts. Here, we've added creamy butter beans for extra fibre and goodness.

Vegetarian

Easy

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Tuna recipes

Sicilian tuna pasta

This quick and easy tuna pasta is ready in under half an hour and brings the fresh, vibrant flavours of the southern Italian coastline right into your kitchen.

Dairy-free